Learning to Love the Big Box
As far as this issue goes, I think urbanists ought to wholeheartedly embrace “big box” chain stores. When there’s a problem with an urban-situated big box store, which there often is, it’s because (like the Home Depot near the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station) the site has been laid out in a way that’s inappropriate for an urban environment. But such inappropriate structures are hardly unique to big box retailers (the CVS at 7th and Florida has a strongly suburbanist design quality) or to national chains. What’s more, these problems are often caused by misguided regulations (which of course should be fixed, but are not the fault of the big box chains) or else relate to a general lack of experience financing and constructing stores in an urban environment.
But you can make a physical structure, like DC USA in Columbia Heights, that works in an urban environment. And it would work even better if it didn’t have so much shopping.
But the bottom line is that successful chains are successful because they’re good at bringing to market products that people want to buy at the offered price. If you want people to live and shop in cities, you need to open the cities to the firms that are good at bringing to market products that people want to buy at the offered price. It’s probably in the nature of things that big box stores can never be as successful in a big, crowded city as they are in the suburbs and that will be especially true if you insist that they house themselves in urban-appropriate structures. At the same time, the density of well-designed urban neighborhoods naturally supports a much larger array of niche retailers, where the economics point to independent ownership. Both of those things are all to the good.
But trying to keep large retailers out, as such, is a silly goal. It’s just not the case that the alternative to major chains being in the city is for people to do all their shopping at high-cost, low-selection local independent retailers. Instead, people drive to the suburbs. Better to bring some of that commerce into the city, where people can get to it on transit or on foot as well as by car, and where it becomes part of the urban economy.
83 Responses to “Learning to Love the Big Box”
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October 26th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
About 10 years ago, Target came to my small town (18,000) wanting to build a store on the outskirts. City Council would not approve the zoning changes needed for them to build the store, so a group of pro-Target citizens put a new bunch of zoning regulations on a referendum. During all the debate over the pros and cons of a Target a couple miles away from our (really very nice) town center, a group of anti-sprawl folks repeatedly sought to get Target to build a multi-story store right down town. They flatly refused. They do have multi-story stores, I think, but our population density was insufficient for them to be willing to do it. So it’s not all the fault of zoning regulations — the stores themselves really prefer the large footprint, large parking-lot format they can get in the suburbs.
October 26th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Other than their abysmal employment practices, I don’t have a major problem with them.
October 26th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
The K-mart in Penn Station is a very sensible layout. It is entirely underground, and seamlessly built into the giant Penn-station/34th-st-subway/Madison-Square-Garden complex. You can shop there, get a ton of stuff for cheap (relative to Manhattan prices, anyway), and go home on the subway/train in a very convenient fashion. It’s a model for urban big box development.
October 26th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
What Fruit Fly said.
As a recently-arrived-from-California-and-no-longer-in-possession-of-a-car New York resident in the mid-1990s, I recall being almost giddy about the appearance of the KMart on Astor Place.
October 26th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
great post, matt.
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/analysis-is-the-mccain-campaign-imploding/
October 26th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Those huge paved lots are really bad for run-off and pollution too. There’s finally some noise in the Puget Sound area about seriously restricting the ability to build that way for both residential and commercial construction.
Builders are strongly against it, of course – but a lot of them are going to go under anyway in the current economic climate. Maybe we’ll have smarter ones next round…
But probably not.
October 26th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Living as I do in in-town Atlanta, I have to think that the coming of big-box retailers has played a role in the continuing revitalization of East Atlanta, Midtown, and other neighborhoods I know. I could wish, in some cases, that these developments had been done better–but I’d never wish they hadn’t been done.
They’ve cut down immensely on the amount of driving I have to do when I need to go to the hardware store or buy some new socks, and provided hundreds of jobs to young and or less-educated city dwellers that, while imperfect in many respects, are a hell of a lot better than the opportunities that were here for them fifteen years ago. A chance, hopefully, for some stability and improvement in people’s lives.
I’m absolutely with Matt on this one–the urban renaissance isn’t just about light rail and bike racks. Bring on Target and Lowe’s, too!
October 26th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Butch
As a builder I agree, but point out that you want better builders about like builders want better customers.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
It strikes me that your political instincts seem incredibly libertarian as far as urban policy is concerned. Or maybe you also have socialist urban policies, but are waiting until after the election to reveal them. Please Matt tell us your and Obama’s socialist urban policies. The McCain campaign doesn’t read your blog anyway.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Plus, they’re often really good at influencing tax incentives to bring them there and collect additional profits which their rivals can’t. Once again the naive liberals seem to be in favor of the free market actually acting like a market, whereas the ‘conservatives’ want to manipulate tax systems to subsidize their favorite large corporations.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
“I think urbanists ought to wholeheartedly embrace ‘big box’ chain stores.”
The “ought to” is an interesting thing here. They only “ought to” if they are urbanists for the same reasons you are. And that’s hardly obvious. Same with “suburbanists.” What ought they do with regard to school funding, big box developments, transit, roads, etc? Well, that depends. Some moved to the suburbs because they were chasing better schools. Some moved because they want a huge garage in which to park their hummers. Some wanted a yard. Others hated the demographics (wink wink) of their urban neighborhood. Etc.
As for urbanists, some like to be closer to work. some like the “buzz” of the city. And some object to “suburban culture” which is typified by large national retail, on aesthetic, economic, social, and other grounds.
That is, some people are urbanists because, for lack of a better definition, they hate big box retail and other signifiers of ‘burbs. What percentage of urbanists are these? I dunno. To what extent does this factor in a one element of their preference for urban living? Dunno. But I hardly think they “ought to” change their views in this case.
Some people define urban living as a place to buy funky things from second-hand stores and otherwise be cooler than other people. Nothing wrong with that.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Large retailers can be integrated into town plans to reinforce and drive traffic to traditional retail main streets. Madison, Connecticut, for example has a main street with coffee shops, a terrific independent book store, movie theater, specialty stores, public library, etc. Behind those shops is a supermarket / big box center with the parking lot placed between the big box stores and main street. Pedestrian passages connect the parking to main street.
This arrangement offers convenience and parking to main street shoppers. From what I can see automobile traffic is well managed.
Of course this arrangement requires assertive land use planning and management by civic authorities, but it is vastly better than isolating big box retailers adjacent to highways where land is cheap and traffic is managed for the sole benefit of the big box stores.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
The Target in downtown MPLS, on Nicollet Mall, is great!
October 26th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Plus, they’re often really good at influencing tax incentives to bring them there and collect additional profits which their rivals can’t.
That’s not a necessary precondition for their existence. I suppose I’m idealistic enough to believe that it’s possible for economies of scale to be instituted without accompanying corruption.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
What’s funny. Most of the anti-sprawl types are also against building conditions in the urban areas which would discourage sprawl. Like building big box stores, or even multi-story condo complexes.
I live in a Suburb, but our area is more urban. I have everything I need virtually within walking distance.
A friend of mine who lives in downtown has to dirve out to the burbs to go grocery shopping.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
When they bulldoze the land behind your house and build the big box with big orange stripe in your “back yard,” it’s not too pleasant. To their credit (with arm twisting by the City Manager), the Home Depot architect came to my house to see what we were seeing, and made some changes, including additional landscaping which over time will belp. Be aware when the zoning in your area gets amended.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I didn’t think it was. But it’s kind of silly to write about the factors influencing big box retailers’ successes (or failures) and spread without accounting for such basic details.
Similarly, there will be agriculture in this country without certain kinds of agro-corporate subsidies — but it will be different without them.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Yeah, great, let every street look like Oxford Street, where stupid tourists, snotty youths and boring suburbanites roam like cattle, let every town center have the same bunch of soulless chain stores with incompetent and disinterested staff, so that there are no more discoveries to be made, no charm, no flair, everything looks exactly the same and you can by exactly the same junk anywhere.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Actually, our wonderful, compact small town needs a big box in the center of town to encourage more development. Here, the big boxes moved to the outskirts of town and what is left in the center of town are over priced tourist boutiques. I would love to see a Target open right in the pedestrian mall, bringing in a lot foot traffic. I doubt it will happen though.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Exactly what happened in Scarborough Maine. Cabela’s was given tax incentives unlike anything LLBean, which is actually a Maine-based company (even if 99.9% of their products are no longer made in Maine or even the U.S.) ever sought or received from Freeport or the state. Haven’t stepped foot in Cabela’s and don’t plan to.
October 26th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I’d kill for a Walmart in my neighborhood. I’m sure Walmart would love it, too. My town, however, is one of those places that has too many jobs and too much development. So, it figures, folks in my town must put a stop to such a thing. Result: I do almost all my shopping out in the sticks. Really stupid. But not only is it cheaper, but Walmart usually carries the stuff I want all in one place.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
There’s a distinction to be made between “big box” stores that actually carry mostly small items (Target, Kmart, etc), and “big box” stores where what you’re bringing home comes in quite literally a big box.
I’ve walked back to my apartment carrying 8′ lengths of wiring conduit, or lumber, and if I had about one block farther to go I’d have said to hell with it. Likewise, trying to navigate crowded buses with even a microwave sized box under an arm is a nightmare. At some point, getting things home really does require a car, and getting all those cars in does require big, suburban style parking lots.
It may be a nuisance to have to drive all the way out to Emeryville to go to the IKEA, but it beats being clocked weekly by people trying to navigate public transit while carrying a BILLY bookcase.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
They do have multi-story stores, I think, but our population density was insufficient for them to be willing to do it.
There’s a multi-storey Target in Atlanta (not downtown, but one of the more built-up burbs) with an escalator for carts.
The obvious point in terms of urban design is made by Jim Kunstler: the life of retail entities is, for the most part, fairly short, even in the build-em-up, tear-em-down US. The ugly-as-fuck prison-architecture Staples that was built just outside the downtown (in violation of the development ordinances and with dubious dealings between the company and the city planning director) will probably not stay up once Staples is gone, and even if that’s 20 years away, it’s a short lifespan for a building. Of course, if your corporate profit runs into the billions, you don’t blink at the idea of treating large retail buildings as the equivalent of temporary housing.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Cabela’s is an amazing place. I’ve only been to one, near SLC, UT. I recommend going for anyone, especially for the typical readers of this blog, who probably are not inclined to be the market Cabela’s is aiming for. It was an amazing sort of uppity redneck museum/spectacle/bazaar/restaurant. Outside being a big city shooting enthusiast, I’m really not their target customer, either. But I found the experience truly enjoyable none the less.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
While not a big box chain, look what starbucks did to the independent coffee situation in philly in the 90’s. It decimated it. It bought up many of the shops and either turned them into starbucks or closed them down. The point being, if you let some chains in, it could easily turn into a tidal wave of chain stores, and then suddenly your urban neighborhood is as bland as the suburbs. In my mind, big box stores make an area family friendly, and that’s not what I want the city to be. Family-friendly means the end of the creative impulse, the energy of a city, and leaves nothing but rows of strollers and restaurants with cereal all over the floor.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Certainly, as a progressive I have nothing against big box stores as such. If I were ever to hear of one that combined adequate payment for employees, documented and verifiable so that they aren’t adding the local relief burden, a willingness to abide by zoning and tax laws without major extortionate concessions, and other general standards of fair play, I’d welcome them in.
In practice, however, inviting big box stores to be major participants in a neighborhood’s economy seems to be like inviting the current Republican Party to manage your safety and health.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
if you let some chains in, it could easily turn into a tidal wave of chain stores, and then suddenly your urban neighborhood is as bland as the suburbs.
That’s why I mentioned Oxford Street (for those unfamiliar, it is Europe’s biggest shopping street, located in London). Have a look here – there is not one store on the whole street, which is 1.5 miles long, that is not part of a bloody chain or conglomerate.
Now London is big and diverse, you can easily go elsewhere, so it doesn’t really matter all that much (though it’s a shame really, culturally and aesthetically). But there are lots of towns in the UK already whose centers are comprised of the same identikit assortment of chain stores. Everything looks the same – that’s just what happens when you relinquish power to these types of businesses.
I don’t have anything against a big department store or two in the middle of a city, in fact there are very nice department stores and they can lend a certain air of urbanity. But I really don’t see the need to encourage everybody from Walmart to Ikea to move in – it’s bad enough already and those who need to be protected are independent retailers.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
What Imaginary said. A trip to Home Depot more often than not results in a purchase of something that requires a car to transport. How a Home Depot sits square in the middle of a dense urban area and maintains a healthy urban flow is not something I can picture.
I also agree with whomever said that Matt unduly glossed over the fact that independent stores, where money is reinvested locally at much higher rates than multinational corporations, are well worth preserving, and carry both tangible and intangible reasons.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Hard to see how Big Box retailers are consistent with Matthew’s “new urbanist” sensibilities. They’re designed around access by car, not by transit or walking. They tend to drive neighborhood retailers out of business by providing lower prices and greater selection. They’re all part of giant corporate chains, with each store having basically the same homogenized look, layout and products. And they’re mostly going to be built in the suburbs, where land is cheaper.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Can the trade-off here be reduced to the desirables of the “density of well-designed urban neighborhoods” plus the perhaps positive “economics” of “independent ownership” versus the labor-exploitive habits of the big chains plus the congestion & other eco-regressive consequences of people driving to the suburbs?
The economics may be a wash (though I’d favor the studies that box the boxers out). Mom & pop aren’t necessarily union friendly, so an influx of low-wage jobs may not destroy anything that was viable anyway. No health benefits, but cheap Pampers! Money goes out of the community (back to Corporate, and to China); some developer tax breaks are offset by theoretically increased sales tax revenue. And so on.
Urban design generally does seem to go to hell. Even if the big boxes can be prettied up, there’s still the same old junk. Mass market arugula, and so on. Wasilla everywhere.
Which leaves the driving. Should we be encouraging driving? No. Bring ‘em in, then. But: Does cheap driving have a lengthy future ahead of it? Likewise no. Which argues that sprawling suburbs and big parking lots have a short-sighted future ahead of them. So why encourage cities to capitulate to a retail model whose profitability relies on an unviable ecology?
Perhaps this is bad Keynesianism: In the long run it’s very small boxes for us all. But I can’t help but think that the “good at bringing market products” at “the offered price” libdoxa rationale only stands in its current formation as long as the driving costs are ignored. We’ve been good at ignoring them for how long now? Still, I’d say if the big boxers can be zoned out, that’s a rational longer term policy decision.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
But: Does cheap driving have a lengthy future ahead of it? Likewise no.
Er, the real cost of driving is likely to continue to fall as economic growth and efficiency improvements lower the cost of both purchasing and operating automobiles. By the way, have you seen the price of gas lately?
The future of retailing for the foreseeable future is more chain stores, more Big Box stores, more malls and more online sales.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
By the way, have you seen the price of gas lately?
It’s very high and has been going up?
October 26th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Big Box stores are actually wholesale outlets that require the customer to serve as his/her own retail distributor. If you don’t have an SUV or a minivan, you are SOL. They don’t work well in cities because most urbanites have one small car or no car at all. What you need in cities is delivery.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
It’s very high and has been going up?
No, the opposite.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
The way this issue is presented fails to acknowledge that an important aspect of the success of the “big box” stores is the availability of cheap off-shore goods. Stores like Wal-Mart not only drive out of business the small (or even not-so-small) local retailer, they drive out of business American manufacturers, as well.
In part, this is because Americans as a consumer group are too focussed on the price of goods and not on the quality, source or need of the goods. If you reject the concept that “cheaper is better,” then Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Home Depot cease to be attractive options. Ditto if you prefer to buy goods marked “Made in USA.”
It is seldom the case that price is the most important aspect of a purchase. Instead of inviting the further destruction of American manufacturing and local retailing through the importation of big box retailers of foreign goods, we should be encouraging American manufacturing through the patronage of local firms and purchase of goods labelled as American-made. And part of that process is relearning ourselves and reeducating our communities in relating value to something besides cost.
Thanks.
mp
October 26th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
In part, this is because Americans as a consumer group are too focussed on the price of goods and not on the quality, source or need of the goods.
Ah, right. You get to decide what’s better for American consumers than American consumers themselves.
I guess Matthew is one those dumb Americans who is “too focused on the price of goods,” given his patronage of stores like Ikea. How dare he buy generic Scandinavian crap made by low-paid workers in China when he could instead spend much money at a small independent retailer for furniture manufactured by unionized American workers in North Carolina.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
getting all those cars in does require big, suburban style parking lots.
Not really. Parking structures. The IKEA in Burbank, CA, is served by multi-story parking structures (also serving a mall, theatres, barnes & noble, restaurants, etc.) and also has a loading zone up in front for when you pick up a large package.
Structures take up a lot less land and can be situated so that they’re on the interior of a block, ringed by stores so that the street frontage is walkable instead of facing a sea of parking.
Also see the multi-story Targets in West Hollywood, Pasadena, and Glendale.
Last month I attended the conference of the California Chapter of the American Planning Association, and at one talk it was pointed out that this notion that downtowns should lack large national retailers is ahistorical. Even in the early 20th century, downtowns would have department stores like Sears or J.C. Penney, as well as “five and dimes” (the Targets or Wal-Marts of their day) like Woolworth and Kress. People could live close in to downtown and get all their business done there, unless they had to go out to a lumber yard or somesuch (I’m not sure how well you could integrate a Home Depot into a walkable environment).
If your downtown doesn’t have the stores people want to buy things at, it’s not going to be a fully-functional center. The downtown L.A. condo boom really took off when Ralphs put a supermarket on 9th street (which, in turn, didn’t go in until there was a certain critical mass of middle-class residents downtown).
October 26th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Mixner (sigh):
The future of retailing for the foreseeable future is… more malls
??? If by malls, you mean what those in the business call “lifestyle centers,” then yeah, sure. If by malls, you mean 1980s-style enclosed shopping malls, then maybe you missed how a bunch of those closed in the 1990s and were replaced with more current retail forms.
October 26th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Matt – so far from God, so close to WalMart.
Once again, labor issues isn’t Matt’s forte.
October 26th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
The posts from El Cid (#10, tax rebates to the big boys) and Michael Powe (#35, focus on cheap crap, driving manufacturing overseas) really hit the nail on the head.
If we decide that those are just facts of modern life, that still leaves us with the problem that most big boxes don’t deliver, and haven’t made it practical for anyone else to step up to fill that need.
I’m afraid that IHMO, Mixer blew his credibility on this thread with his post (#31) claiming that the real cost of driving is *likely* to continue to fall. Referring to a momentary fluctuation in gas prices over the last week is not a serious argument.
October 26th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Adam Villani,
I mean what I said, malls. If you’re saying the design of malls has changed somewhat over the past 20 or 30 years, I agree. The dominant form among newer malls is probably still the conventional indoor-enclosed shopping center, but there are also many open-air malls that integrate large public spaces into the shopping areas. Some are even laid out to mimic certain features of traditional main street and downtown-city shopping districts. I think these newer mall designs bring some of the “walkability” benefits that “new urbanists” say they want. But they’re still malls. You still have to drive to them and park your car in the giant parking lot or structure (or if you’re poor, take the bus). You’re not going to find many of their customers walking to them from home.
October 26th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
This is a lazy post from Matt, one following the general format of “Where’s the problem with big-box and why not let the people buy cheaper goods?”, and generally ignoring the thousands of acres of abandoned big-box and parking lot creating suburban slums.
To young people, and the kind of people who think Vegas is a vacation, the big box is amazing! It’s so big! And there’s all this stuff! Priced at $7.99! Not being careful or experienced shoppers, they don’t realize that their total savings may amount to $3 or $4- about what they paid extra in gas to get there.
And the bookcases! Enough with the bookcases already! OMG, if you really need 400 lineal feet of bookcase, call a carpenter fer chrissake- he’ll use real wood and make them so you can knock them down and move them if that’s what you need. Or, you could use cinder blocks and planks which any lumber store will deliver, usually for free.
Naturally this is a huge discussion involving millions of corporate clones manipulating tens of thousands of local governing units, importing loopholes, and hapless consumers to take advantage of a landscape in which shopping seems to be the most meaningful entertainment. Little we say here will be much noted or long remembered.
Rather, it is for those living, where the big-box retailer seeks to sink their claws, to ask “Do we really need this?” And the answer is usually pretty plain- like a hole in the head.
Sure, it all makes sense- to young people who intend to move halfway across the continent sometime in the next five years. To them it’s somewhat reassuring to see a retailer they trust- Target.
And that in itself is a pretty sad comment.
October 26th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
I’m afraid that IHMO, Mixer blew his credibility on this thread with his post (#31) claiming that the real cost of driving is *likely* to continue to fall.
I think you blew your credibility a long time ago. Care to explain why you think the real cost of driving is not likely to continue to fall?
Referring to a momentary fluctuation in gas prices over the last week is not a serious argument.
If by “momentary” you mean a period of two months and counting, and by “fluctuation” you mean a fall in price of 30%, then yes, exactly correct.
October 26th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Big Box stores are designed for car shopping. You buy a lot of stuff on one trip that’s too heavy to carry home.
As a bachelor, Matt is basically clueless about what daily life is like for a woman with children. Basic questions like how much does a week’s shopping weigh, and how is a 130 pound woman going to carry it all home on one of Matt’s cute little trolleys along with her baby and toddler are things that simply don’t register on his 26-year-old brain.
October 26th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Instead of your big box store or stores, why not create reasonable
rents and allow a bunch of small businesses a chance. They pay taxes
and form small business and neighborhood associations, and a community develops. Small business often sell products of other small businesses and os you get a variety of unique products. You really need to reconsider your position on this. There are alternatives.
October 26th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
millions of corporate clones…importing loopholes…
Importing loopholes? I have always purchased 100% American-made loopholes, which are far superior in sturdiness and durability to the foreign product. I encourage all commenters here to do the same. As far as buying bookcases, when I moved into my present home I hired a carpenter to install bookshelves–none of the estimates were less than four or five times the price of a comparable IKEA product.
The economies of scale available to them would seem to indicate that big-box stores are here to stay. In my opinion, it’s more realistic to enforce employment, zoning, and tax standards on big-box retailers than, for example, to “reeducat[e] our communities in relating value to something besides cost,” a somewhat vague proposal by Michael Powe which, as I scroll through the thread, is the only policy alternative any commenter here has ventured to offer.
October 26th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
how is a 130 pound woman going to carry it all home on one of Matt’s cute little trolleys along with her baby and toddler are things that simply don’t register on his 26-year-old brain.
Perhaps Matt’s finally seen the truth of a certain commenter’s basic Weltanschauung, and assumed that if said woman is white, she doesn’t have children–and if she’s a minority, of course, she’s figured out a way to steal everything she needs and doesn’t need to go shopping at all.
October 26th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Basic questions like how much does a week’s shopping weigh, and how is a 130 pound woman going to carry it all home on one of Matt’s cute little trolleys along with her baby and toddler
Um Um women have been carting home groceries for millenia. Cars are a relatively new innovation. Millions of women who are carless do it every day right here in the U.S. . . that’s part of the process, doing it almost every day. On her way back from picking the kids up at school or the dentist or wherever she stops at the stores and picks up that day’s groceries. Or she does it between the time she gets off the bus or train and the time she gets home from work.
Go to the right neighborhood and they sell those cute little trolleys, since they are stocking them there must be some demand….
October 26th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Here’s one of a number of links on this subject:
http://www.bigcitiesbigboxes.com/mcg_big_box_stores_dont_create_jobs_they_destroy_jobs/
All these comment seam so proper. Too apathetic for my taste..
From a personal perspective, I hate these box franchises. Everywhere you go everything is the same. What’s the point of going? I’ve always been able to find toilet paper and toothpaste a good prices.
Barnes and Noble? I liked it when there was a nice variety of local books stores , each which had it’s own niche. Home Depot? Hardware, lumber, never a problem. Wallmart? Target? you really want to buy the clothes they sell there? New York is loosing many of it’s truly unique stores and neighborhoods and associations. Nothing I like being served by someone who couldn’t gave a *!%@ about you. Have you notices how much Ikea junk ends up in trash collections?
This is stuff you can’t even collect and refurbish. It’s made of presswood. Junk!
I don’t wnat my family members working in those mindless jobs ant pay nothing. This is the wrong way to go, really.
October 26th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Our regional Home Depot stores are so large, with high ceilings, and stock birdseed and grass seed, with the result that sparrows and other small birds have taken up permanent residence in the rafters. They twitter all day long (probably driving the staff crazy).
Home Depot: an artificial ecosystem.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’ll buy furniture (even all-wood furniture) from Ikea again. The metal bolts in my wood dresser from Ikea eventually worked their way loose, so I had to drill holes and put in screws. I must be the first (with the recession I can’t say only) person to bother with mending an Ikea dresser. Next time I’m going to Goodwill to look for a dresser with real wood joints.
October 26th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
“successful chains are successful because they’re good at bringing to market products that people want to buy at the offered price”
Or, roughly: they’re successful because they’ve funded their rapid national expansion through tax payer subsidies. Local property taxes are exempted on their infrastructure, state taxes are dodged to the hilt through various mechanisms and races to the bottom, their lare part-time labor forces are put on a dole the tax-paying local retailers they replace are effectively paying for, and then when it’s all over – and here’s where Jason Furman’s pro-Walmart arguments almost begin to describe reality – there’s a nice churning of state and local tax subsidization that are redirected to federal revenues when the firms expansion has slowed and the profits roll in.
October 26th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Um Um women have been carting home groceries for millenia. Cars are a relatively new innovation.
Brilliant. So rather than continue to take advantage of the enormous savings in time and hassle that cars provide, you think it’s plausible to expect American women to just give up their cars for shopping on foot or by transit, on the grounds that “women have been carting groceries home for millenia.”
The living conditions under which most human beings have lived for most of human history do not tell us much about the lifestyle preferences of modern people living in wealthy, technologically-sophisticated societies like the United States.
October 26th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
2 cheers for MY. You would have received a third cheer if you had mentioned Walmart in the post. I am sure that was what you were thinking, though. Heck, maybe your caution helped the message. Mentioning walmart would have caused most lefty eyes to glaze over in disgust. At least your present post may have swayed lefties a tiny bit.
October 26th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
The wikipedia page for “big box store” has a walmart prominently displayed.
October 26th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I got about halfway through this article before wondering if Mixner would pop his head in and declare that the success of big-box stores was proof of the superiority of the automobile. I got about halfway through the comments, before finding that very post. Mixner, you never disappoint.
October 26th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Mixner: If by “momentary” you mean a period of two months and counting, and by “fluctuation” you mean a fall in price of 30%, then yes, exactly correct.
Five years ago, I was paying less than 50% for a gallon of gasoline than I am today. You’ll forgive me if I’m not impressed with a 30% drop.
October 26th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
…not to mention that the fall in prices is due a fall in demand. Your causation is backwards: gas prices are falling because people are driving less.
October 26th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
The way America is built today is largely because that’s what married women with children want (as measured by how they spend their money).
Much of the commentary on planning, however, comes from people who don’t actually know many married women with children.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Mixner:
The dominant form among newer malls is probably still the conventional indoor-enclosed shopping center,
Okay, now I’m genuinely curious. Where? Here in Southern California, the only enclosed malls I’m aware of that opened up since the beginning of the 1990s were Ontario Mills in 1996 and the Promenade in Temecula in 1999. Stonewood Center in Downey went from open-air to enclosed in 1990.
Since then, we’ve seen the demise or conversion of, off the top of my head, Santa Monica Place, Long Beach Plaza, Hawthorne Mall, the Sherman Oaks Galleria, Indian Hill Center in Pomona, Fallbrook Mall in Canoga Park, Plaza Pasadena, Whittwood Mall in Whittier, The City mall in Orange, Marina Pacifica in Long Beach, Huntington Beach Mall, etc.
October 26th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
“As a bachelor, Matt is basically clueless about what daily life is like for a woman with children. Basic questions like how much does a week’s shopping weigh, and how is a 130 pound woman going to carry it all home on one of Matt’s cute little trolleys along with her baby and toddler are things that simply don’t register on his 26-year-old brain…”
Wow– ask Matt where he grew up and he probably isn’t so clueless. Yes, in the ‘burbs, one goes shopping weekly and has a lot of heavy bags to take home. Urban residents simply shop more often. Having lived in both urban and suburban spaces, I ate a lot more fresh food living in the city because I could pick up veggies on the way home after work. Only suburbanites shop for a whole week at a time, because it is impractical to fight traffic every day and fight their way through the supermarket.
October 26th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Sailer, I can’t bear the suspense: please regale us all with annecdotes about your harem of married, womb-fruitful ladiez and how you know just what makes every last one of them tick….
October 27th, 2008 at 2:07 am
You want to see big-box stores successfully integrated into the downtown? See Toronto.
One of the keys to doing it successfully is recognizing that the stores can’t be identical to the ones out in the burbs. A good example is the Canadian Tire which is adjacent to the Eaton Centre and just opened a few years ago. Unlike the typical Canadian Tire store, they don’t have a large automotive section (basically just some spare parts), or a large gardening section. They instead focus on basic household tools and supplies, sporting goods, that sort of thing. What you’d expect someone living in an built up urban area who probably doesn’t have a lawn and perhaps not even a car.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
As a practicing planner for 25 years, I’ve noticed a couple of things about urban shopping patterns that this discussion seems to focus on:
1. A strong independent retail base seems to be possible in 2 areas; upper-income areas because of the disposable income and density of income these neighborhoods have, and lower-income areas where travel restrictions, household income, etc., mean the residents spend more locally.
Middle-income in many urban areas don’t have either, and they tend to be a bit more cost-conscious. They are willing to drive further to search out value, after all, until very recently, the marginal cost of driving by the high-cost/low selection store to another retailer wasn’t all that great.
2. If we want to repopulate urban areas with middle-income households, we’ll need to figure out how to accommodate national, larger-format stores.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
There are two big box retailers I frequent near my office in Manhattan: Home Depot and Bed Bath and Beyond. Both are located in converted historic buildings (conserving resources and the expense of energy) and both offer delivery for larger items. They’re also easily accessible by public transportation. I still frequent the smaller retailers nearby, but when my needs are different, the Big Box stores serve that need.
By contrast there are two new big box malls being constructed in close proximity to each other: one near Yankee Stadium where a historic market complex was demolished and the other across the Harlem River in East Harlem. Though both locations are closer in terms of distance to my home, they will be infinitely more difficult for me to get to and then leave with my purchases because there’s minimal access to public transportation or even taxis.
I think that when done intelligently, Big Box stores can be fantastic for urbanites.
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